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Highlights of the 2024 virtual CoMO conference

The Confederation of Meningitis Organisations (CoMO) annual conference is our biggest opportunity to come together as an international network and “family” of advocates, to make connections, share ideas and learn. Exclusive to CoMO members, the conference is highly valued as a perk – in fact, in our last annual survey of our members (February 2024), it was voted the biggest benefit of being a member of CoMO.


The conference alternates each year between in-person and online, so following our 2023 London conference, this year our conference was fully virtual. Although online meetings can never fully replace the feeling of being face to face, holding the conference online does allow us to increase accessibility considerably – with a 50% increase in attendees in 2024 compared to 2023.


A selection of our conference delegates


Session highlights

 

Member stories

We keep our members' voices at the centre of what we do, so on each of the three days of the conference, we led with a short video highlighting the experience of one of our members. Christine Bennborn (Meningokockfonden, Sweden) shared her heartbreaking story of losing her 18-year-old son to meningitis and how it spurred her on to found her organisation; Jamie Schanbaum (The JAMIE Group, USA) spoke of her traumatic quadruple limb loss, making it through and helping to pass a new law in Texas to protect students; and Dr. Celine Osi (Nigeria) conveyed the challenges of treating people who only come to hospital once their symptoms have already become serious.


Expert speakers

We were very grateful to have leading experts as speakers – from the World Health Organization (WHO) and prominent worldwide research universities. The topics they covered included:

  • Rollout of pentavalent vaccine in Africa – Three million people have already been vaccinated in Nigeria and Niger since March, and millions more are due to receive their vaccines across the meningitis belt from 2025 onwards.

  • Vaccine for Strep B streptococcus (GBS) We heard about how we are getting closer and closer to having a vaccine against GBS, one of the leading causes of meningitis in infants. Although there are many steps still left to take, progress continues toward this essential goal defined in the WHO Road Map to Defeat Meningitis by 2030.

  • Affordability of vaccines – We found out about an international campaign to ensure the affordability of key meningitis vaccines, especially in middle-income countries, who (perhaps surprisingly) often struggle the most with procurement.

  • Vaccine hesitancy – Rekha Lakshmanan (The Immunization Partnership, USA) emphasised the importance of empathy and connection when engaging people on this difficult topic, and gave some helpful example dialogues showing how to acknowledge people's concerns before presenting them with essential facts.


Updates from CoMO HQ

We launched the Race to 2030 Health Communications report, which outlines how communication resources are developed and used to deliver life-saving messages about meningitis symptoms, risks, treatment and prevention. It also stresses the need for funding to support communications work.


There were updates on our biggest international campaigns, World Meningitis Day and the Meningitis Flag, plus case studies from Dr. Ravi Kumar (The Brain Child Trust, India) and Danielle Hodge (The PAMAH Foundation, USA) who used our resources to create impactful social media campaigns in 2023.


We also reviewed some of the highlights from our members’ activity around the world over the last 12 months – including vaccination policy wins, getting involved with national planning processes, and members taking inspiration from each other’s successful activities. Watch this space for a follow-up blog about more of our members’ successes, challenges and ideas – as shared in our regional breakout sessions.


Interactive platform and translation

Cross-regional connections are also becoming more and more possible thanks to technology: we used automated translated captions both for our presentations and our breakout room networking sessions. Although not without glitches, this technology still allowed speakers of several different languages to connect and learn about each other's work – an exciting development which we hope will continue to enrich the mutual learning within our international network.

 

Member feedback

We were delighted with how everything went this year, and our members agreed, with the sessions receiving an average rating of 4.54 out of 5, and the conference overall getting a satisfaction rating of 4.63 out of 5. Conference chair Jane Plumb (Group B Strep Support, UK) even declared it our “best conference so far”!


Survey responses from our previous conferences had highlighted how much our members wanted to have the chance to interact and network with each other. We included daily networking and our virtual conference feedback tells us these were widely enjoyed. However, post-conference surveys reveal that members still want more time allotted to networking and conversation. Our team have listened to this vital feedback and will aim to build even more interaction into future conferences and consider ways of networking throughout the year. 

 

And finally...

We’re delighted to hear that you all found the conference as beneficial and rewarding as we did. Thank you to everyone who shared their feedback. Now we’ll get started on planning our next conference. We’ll be in touch with more details as soon as possible.


If you are a CoMO member who missed any of the sessions and would like to watch recordings or download presentation files, please email como@meningitis.org.


Laura Ross, Elaine Devine, Sam Nye and Sam Brightbart: conference organisers and speakers from the CoMO and Meningitis Research Foundation team


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